yarn

This past weekend I did shopping for two crochet projects: a shell stitch afghan (Christmas present for my mom) and a large, chunky infinity scarf that I had been wanting to create for awhile. This shopping haul didn’t go smoothly as I ended up not getting the yarn I needed, but I did get the large crochet hooks I needed with a little searching.

I am going to talk about the large sized crochet hooks first in this posts since those were the ones that I was able to purchase and am most excited about. I purchased a set of crochet hooks in size US L-P by Boye. The other crochet hook that I purchased is the largest of the hooks, size S, which is also by Boye. I have all them shown in the picture below. Aren’t the colors on these so pretty! I have been using the N size one since Saturday and really like it so far. The plastic is really light and smooth and doesn’t catch on the yarn I am using (which is Caron Simply Soft and Lion Brand Pound of Love). This is my first time using plastic hooks, too, as all of my other hooks are steel and aluminum. I am definitely pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying crocheting with a plastic hook.

I purchased these hooks at Michaels Craft Store, which was the second store that I went to. I was able to use their mobile app on my phone to pull up a 40% off coupon that I used for the purchase as well, so if you have a smart phone, it’s worth looking into their app for extra coupons. Here is a link to their mobile app page in case anyone is interested.

I’m going to continue this post with talking about the yarn that I ended up not purchasing. Here is a little back story first. I always do all of my searching for supplies online first before I go to the stores, especially this time of year because you can find out what you want without having to drive from store to store in traffic, find what sales are going on and get great coupons online to take to the store. I saw that Jo Ann Fabrics had some great sales. I needed 7 skeins of Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick Yarn for the afghan I was going to make, and they had it on sale for $5.59 when everywhere else it was priced at $7.99 (pictured below). This was a great deal! With that, they had crochet hooks and knitting needles at 25% off. So, I figured that I’d head off to Jo Ann Fabrics and get all my supplies there.

I got into the store and was really impressed with the selection of yarn they had. I was able to find my 7 skeins of Thick & Quick yarn without issue. They unfortunately didn’t have the crochet hooks that I needed, so I kept those on my list to get at Michaels as I remembered seeing them there during my last shopping trip.

I got up to the cash wrap and was shocked when the yarn was rung up full price. I asked the cashier about the price saying that I had checked it online before coming and had specifically made the trip to the store because they had this yarn on sale. She told me that the prices and sales online aren’t always the same as the ones in store. I asked if it was possible to do a price adjustment and honor the price that was shown online. She said she would check and got a manager to assist me in explaining that I would need a print out of the web page to do this. Unfortunately, this didn’t help me in my current situation as I was already in the store and would have to go home, print out the web page and come back to battle all the holiday traffic and crowds again. I asked if it was possible to accept the sale price if I pulled up the product page with the sale price on my smart phone; they said this was not acceptable either. I was a bit frustrated at this point, so I ended up not getting the yarn there.

So, the lesson learned here is that if you do online research before you go shopping for materials, be careful if you use Jo Ann Fabric and Craft Stores website to scope out sales and prices. They do not always reflect what is in the actual stores. You can print out the web page of the item to try to get a price adjustment in store, but for me, this just seemed to be a huge hassle, and you might not even be guaranteed a price adjustment with this. It might be best to just order the item from their website if it has the best price or to check out their print circular for sales as those will reflect what is in store. Hopefully this post will keep you from running into the same issue as me, and you can save time by not having to drive around to a store that you think might have a sale when it really doesn’t. If there’s a good sale on the website, be safe and just order it online, or check the printed circular if you want to shop in store.

As for my mom’s Christmas present, I ended up coming up with a better idea for her, so I no longer need the yarn. My mom mentioned that she wanted a rainbow that she could wrap around herself, so I am making her just that. Here is a sneak peak of her rainbow chunky infinity scarf in progress:

Excited that I get to work on the large, chunky knit infinity scarf sooner than what I thought as well! I’ll be making more of these when this one is done.

And, since I’ve been doing more reviews lately, I wanted to make a note at the end of this post to let everyone know that I did not get paid by any company mentioned with money or products to write this post. All view points and opinions expressed in this post are purely my own based off of my experiences. I enjoy writing and sharing these posts with my readers in hopes that this information is helpful to others out there.